Kyle and her husband moved to Brookfield in 1986. She became active in local politics and started blogging in 2004. Her focus is primarily on local issues but often includes state and national topics, too. Kyle looks at things from the taxpayers' perspective in a creative, yet down to earth way, addressing them from a practical point of view.

ME: they might just be trying to eliminate the human footprint. Yellowstone tried to eliminate all the cabins at Old faithful until a congressman got involved. Cedar breaks had their lodge torn down. Some want people to not be allowed in the parks at all.

How is this any different from the signs, watch out for falling rocks on the highway? Rock slides do occur.

While I am on the subject of Curry, this is a great example of government sanctioned privatized enterprise quality vs the free market.

The
National Parks Service says 233 cabins at Yosemite will close
permanently due to the potential for deadly rockslides,
affecting 157,500 overnight guests per year.

YOSEMITE
NATIONAL PARK, Calif. - A third of the units at a popular lodging
complex at Yosemite National Park will be permanently closed because an
unstable cliff has created the potential for deadly rockslides, the
National Park Service said Friday.

The agency said
233 cabins will close permanently, or about one-third of the lodging
units available at Curry Village to park visitors. About half of the
618 cabins have been off-limits since a rockfall on the historic
complex Oct. 8.

"The NPS can no
longer treat each rockfall as an isolated incident," the park service
said in a statement Friday. "Instead, we must look at the area
comprehensively and recognize that geologic processes that have shaped
Yosemite Valley since the last glaciers receded will continue to result
in rockfall."

The closure will affect 157,500 overnight
guests per year, said Scott Gediman, a parks spokesman. Officials will
remove the cabins, fence off the area and install educational exhibits
explaining why the area was closed and the history of rockfalls.

"I'm glad
nobody else had to die," said attorney Dugan Barr, who is suing
Yosemite for wrongful death on behalf of the family of rock climber
Peter Terbush.

Terbush was
killed in 1999 in a rockfall behind Curry Village. Barr has been
frustrated that Yosemite does not warn Curry Village visitors of
potential rockfall danger.

"If they'd just
put up a sign on a bulletin board there, put up a piece of paper that
says we've had rockfalls of these sizes on these dates, then they can
let people make up their own minds about whether they want to go up
there."

Earlier reluctanceDespite two deaths and an
increase in the frequency and severity of the rockfalls since 1996,
park officials had been reluctant act earlier.

For a decade,
the National Park Service has known that the 3,000-foot granite cliff
hanging over the village is susceptible to colossal rockslides like one
last month that crushed cabins and sent schoolchildren running for
their lives.

An
Associated Press examination of records found that rock falls in and
around Curry Village have been happening more frequently in the past
several years, with two people killed and about two dozen injured since
1996.

And yet, the
park service repeatedly rebuilt and repaired the lodgings rather than
bar the public or post warnings at the village, which has been around
for more than a century.

"To
me, that's irresponsible," said Deanna Maschmeyer of Monterey, who ran
with her two children from their cabin as the equivalent of 570 dump
trucks of rock shook the ground Oct. 8. "Now that I've lived through
it, I can't believe it's safe. I will not stay there again."

Falling
rocks at one of America's most popular parks have led to at least one
lawsuit and scientific debate over whether the increasing danger is
attributable to construction in the park.

Park
officials say that over the years, they have carefully weighed the
safety of visitors against public demand for lodging amid one of the
world's most spectacular natural wonders.

"It's
not inaction on our part over the past 10 years," Gediman, the park's
public affairs officer, said before Friday's move. "It's just us saying
we're going to do the scientific studies and make decisions based upon
that."

Families gather below Glacier PointCurry
Village, with 618 cabins, accounts for almost two-thirds of the lodging
at Yosemite. It is also the most family-friendly lodging in the park,
consisting of cabins, stores and restaurants run by an outside company.
And it is in Yosemite Valley, beneath the unstable granite of Glacier
Point.

The village
has experienced more rockfalls during the past decade than any other
place in the one-by-seven-mile valley. U.S. Geological Survey and park
records list as many as 46 since 1996 — four times the number during
the previous 139 years.

Since
1999, 20 of the structures at Curry Village have been directly hit by
boulders and many more have been damaged by flying rocks.

Since
1857, at least 535 rockfalls in Yosemite Valley have killed 14 people
and injured 62, more than at any other national park. Yosemite Valley
is easily the most collapse-prone place in a park that receives over 3
million visitors a year.

Officials
say that visitors assume some risk when they visit national parks, and
that the parks are not legally required to post warnings about hazards
in wild areas.

"By
definition Yosemite National Park is a wild place and these natural
processes occur and are going to continue," Gediman said. "By us not
putting signs right there, we're not trying to hide the fact that there
has been rockfall in the area."

He said if officials put up warning signs about every hazard, the park would be covered with them.

Is village wild, or a motel?However,
the family of Peter Terbush, a geology student killed in a 660-ton
collapse of rock while standing at the cliff's base at Curry Village in
1999, contends visitors should be warned.

"There's
nothing wild about Curry Village," said Barr, who filed the family's
wrongful-death suit against the park. "It's a motel."

In
the most recent incident last month, more than 150 youngsters were on
field trips when rocks hit 17 cabins and flattened one at 6:55 a.m.
Nicole Friere of Santa Barbara told the AP that her sixth-grade
daughter and three other girls cowered in their cabin as rocks
shattered the windows. No one was seriously injured.

Although
park officials attribute the increased number of falls at Curry Village
to nature, two studies have concluded that human activity above Glacier
Point contributed to two fatal rock collapses in the late 1990s — the
one that killed the student geologist at Curry Village, and another at
the nearby Happy Isles nature center.

In
the Happy Isles accident in 1996, the 245 mph air blast from a massive
avalanche knocked down and denuded 1,000 trees across 32 acres, killing
a 20-year-old visitor, paralyzing another and injuring 12 more people.

Water use causing rockfalls?Two
university scientists later concluded that thousands of gallons of
water leaking from a septic system for public restrooms on the overlook
had seeped into crevasses and loosened the rock.

The
professors also found that many subsequent rockfalls coincided with the
release of water from a 147,000-gallon storage tank atop Glacier Point.
It was one of those rockfalls that killed Terbush.

More
recently, the paving of a parking lot and other construction altered
runoff patterns on Glacier Point, contributing to other rockfalls, one
of the scientists, Chester F. "Skip" Watts, a geology professor at
Radford University in Virginia, said in an interview. "That's what we
are seeing now," he said.

Historically,
most Yosemite rockfalls occur during the winter, when freezing stresses
rock joints. Yet on Glacier Point, records show, falls occurred almost
exclusively in the warmer months between 1996 and 2004.

"Those
atypical rockfall months coincide with peak visitation and consequently
peak water use," Watts and colleague Robert Watters from the University
of Nevada-Reno wrote in a paper presented last year at a scientific
conference.

AP

A rockslide on Oct. 8 kicks up dust above Yosemite's Curry Village.

Watts
was an expert witness in the lawsuit filed over Terbush's death. A
federal judge dismissed the case, saying national parks have wide
discretion over whether to issue warnings about natural hazards. But an
appeals court this year sent the case back to a lower court to decide
whether the park can be held liable for negligent maintenance.

Yosemite
geologist Greg Stock, hired three years ago mainly to study the
rockfalls, said the incident last month indicates the professors are
incorrect in theorizing that human water use is to blame.

"It
wasn't water, and yet it was a large rockfall," he said. "That helps to
demonstrate that what causes and triggers rockfall at Glacier Point is
a very complicated issue."

One
likely spot for the next big rockfall is across the valley on Middle
Brother Peak, where a 700,000-ton slab of granite hangs precariously
2,500 feet above an undeveloped area. Unlike Curry Village, it is
posted with signs alerting drivers of the danger. They are prohibited
from stopping, even momentarily, to admire the view.

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